It Happened on His Watch, But…
Right now, at the time of his passing, it seems wrong to question the legacy of President Jimmy Carter. He accomplished many wonderful and important things during his lifetime, and I do not mean to detract from his greatness. The guy won a Nobel Peace Prize for crying out loud! His legacy includes a significant event for beer enthusiasts, too. Although it has been widely ballyhooed over the years, his role in legalizing homebrewing and helping to launch the craft beer revolution is often exaggerated and misunderstood. Jimmy Carter indeed signed the bill into law, but a U.S. Senator from California is the unsung hero of the story. We can honor and appreciate the former President while also recognizing the truth.
The passage of H.R. 1337 in 1978 effectively legalized homebrewing on the federal level. With the newfound freedom, many states quickly legalized homebrewing, creating their own laws to control it. This set the stage for the craft beer revolution that kicked off in the 1980s and raged for the next three decades.
Not a Beer Bill
People talk about the bill as if it was the homebrewer’s version of the Declaration of Independence. It was not. At its inception, this bill had nothing to do with beer. Dubbed H.R. 1337, it was a tax bill involving the production of trucks and buses. It amended the Internal Revenue Code, clarifying how excise taxes were calculated for manufacturers of large, heavy vehicles.
It was not as sexy and niche as a bill legalizing homebrewing. Honestly, a homebrewing bill probably wouldn’t have made it out of committee, but H.R. 1337 was a simple, slam-dunk tax bill that revised the IRS code. Any reasonably skilled Congressperson knows what to do with this kind of can’t-lose bill: ride its coattails and attach unrelated stuff to it.
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
H.R. 1337 was amended to include a provision allowing crop dusters to get refunds on gas taxes. Another amendment addressed how retirement funds are transferred once an employee is laid off or terminated. A third amendment addressed California’s right to offer people cash payments instead of food stamps.
Finally, H.R. 1337 was amended to provide individuals with an exemption to the beer and wine excise tax. It was not illegal to make beer, but it was illegal to not pay taxes on the beer once you’d made it. No realistic mechanism existed for an individual to pay such taxes. You’d need to start a company and sell the beer to pay the taxes. Because homebrewers, by definition, were not looking to sell the beer, there was no reason for them to pay an excise tax, except that the law required it.
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
The amendment to H.R. 1337 allowed “any adult to produce wine and beer for personal and family use and not for sale without incurring the wine or beer excise taxes or any penalties for quantities per calendar year of: (1) 200 gallons if there are two or more adults in the household and (2) 100 gallons if there is only one adult in the household.” Basically, the bill did not legalize homebrewing so much as it created a tax exemption, which, in effect, legalized homebrewing.
Cheers to Alan Cranston
Senator Alan Cranston (D. CA) created and sponsored H.R. 1337’s homebrewing amendment. Representative William Steiger (R. WI) co-sponsored the amendment. I was unable to find a lot of information about why Senator Cranston introduced the amendment, though we know that he did work on it with a professor at U.C. Davis (home to one of the nation’s leading winemaking and brewing programs). I found no evidence that Cranston was a homebrewer or even a beer enthusiast.
H.R. 1337, in its amended form, landed on the desk of President Jimmy Carter in October 1978 and was signed into law. The law took effect on February 1, 1979. Very shortly thereafter, Charlie Papazian and Charlie Matzen officially launched the American Homebrewers Association, an occasion marked by the publishing of the first issue of Zymurgy magazine.
With homebrewing now legal, brewers expanded their craft. People published how-to books and opened homebrew supply shops. Brewers honed their skills and dreamed of bigger things. Some amateurs decided to go pro and transformed their hobby into a business. In that regard, H.R. 1337 helped spawn the craft beer revolution of the 1980s.
In 1979, there were only 90 breweries in the USA. Within a decade, that number tripled. Today, over 9,000 breweries dot the map from sea to shining sea. Without that amendment introduced by Senator Cranston and without that signature from Jimmy Carter, who knows where we’d be?
Image above from depositphotos.com.
